Rise (2007)

I came, fairly quickly, to think of Rise as nothing more than a poor imitation of Blade – though I confess that it’s not exactly the same. For instance, instead of a hot black guy, here we have a hot Asian chick (Lucy “far too hot to make this awful a movie” Liu), and instead of being a daywalking half-vampire on a mission to kill vampires she’s a daywalking newbie-vampire on a mission to kill vampires.

Not only is Rise completely predictable from beginning to end, but Rise is completely predictable from beginning to end. And P.S. when everyone expects her to kick her way out of the cold storage in the morgue? Maybe you should just cut away to another shot, or perhaps have your hands cut off, instead of being so damn predictable.

It might be true that vampire movies don’t get counted as horror these days, so it could be that I was expecting too much when I thought maybe I’d be scared at some point, but Rise didn’t make me feel anything. If I can’t feel scared, it would only be fair that I could feel Liu, right? I can be quick. Promise.

Not expected:
Nick Lachey (yes, that one) in a role as a low-life hood. I must confess I could definitely watch more of Lachey lying dead on the floor of a barn with his jugular torn out. Far preferable to watching him suffer through another informercial, poor thing.

So I may have already intimated that I don’t know why Liu is slumming it in this piece of crap movie, but, on a similar note, just what the fuck is Michael Chiklis doing in it?

It could have been good. The cast, aside from the dreadfully cliche English accented vampire ‘boss’, is fairly good. There’s always room for a decent vampire movie – though they’re extremely rare. But you just need to make it well. And this isn’t well made.

Now, I think I have a theory on where to start looking when it comes to apportioning the blame: Not only is the director also the writer, but the director is also the writer of Snakes on a Plane! So. Enough said?